Spring Clean

I am in the midst of a major pre-Spring clean. Lying around the house last week without anything to distract me, I realised that there a lot of things about the house that I'm not happy with and want to change. Now. A lot of those things hinge around the fact that we have way too much stuff for the space we're in. So, on the weekend, I attacked the kitchen cupboards, finding a disturbing amount of dried and canned goods that were well and truly expired (2009 called, and they don't want that cake mix back) Out it all went! I moved all of my cooking and crafting books onto the now cleared kitchen shelves so that I can use the kitchen with its big table space as a crafting area during the day,  and all of the foodie stuff is now neatly stowed away in the now almost empty kitchen cupboards.

The living room is basically ok. I am working on getting a lot of the framed photos off surfaces and onto a 'memory wall'. Our masses of books I am slowly culling to either sell (hopefully) or send to the op-shop. The bedroom with its rising damp issues (love old houses!) is the domain of my husband at present, given that it's problems are structural rather than cosmetic. This leaves me staring down the barrel of the abomination that is the study which is currently a home office/craft room/storage room and dressing room.

So much stuff.

But some little part of the old bower-bird me has rebelled. I have found pieces of Crown Lynn Genuine Ironstone (made in New Zealand) ceramic in op-shops before and have been gently (but not overwhelmingly) charmed by its sweet 60s patterns. Yesterday at the op-shop, though, I found this beauty. I bought the two bread-and-butter plates that they had but I talked myself out of the four matching dinner plates. But I'm going back for them today... I'll just throw out some of our old, boring dinner plates. Then we'll need the new ones. Right? Right?